Talk:National emblem of Belarus

Featured article concerns

This article is listed as a featured article, but does not meet the current criteria. There is uncited text in several areas, including the entire symbolism section (which may be original research). There is also an indiscriminate number of image in the Pahonia section. Hog Farm _Talk 15:40, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

There are still issues with lack of citations and stubby paragraphs. I also have doubts about some of the sources such as "Anon (1972). Флаг и Герб СССР. Moscow. p. 26." (t · c) buidhe 23:12, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Toynbee's A Study of History cited

Hey there Pofka and Cukrakalnis

I want to suggest that the edit where Toynbee is referenced be removed completely despite the adjustments recently made. Toynbee is not considered a reliable historian post-WWII, he was popular before WWII. Around mid 20th century he might have been considered "a leading specialist on international affairs", as Pofka suggests in his edit history, but that is clearly not the case today. I will quote a passage from the article about A Study of History:

After 1960, Toynbee's ideas faded both in academia and the media, to the point of seldom being cited today.[12][13] Toynbee's approach to history, his style of civilizational analysis, faced skepticism from mainstream historians who thought it put an undue emphasis on the divine, which led to his academic reputation declining, though for a time, Toynbee's Study remained popular outside academia.

Toynbee is known for a macroscopic, non-academic view of history that was only popular with the general public. Taking into account that the edit makes a rather POV statement about the "greatness" of Lithuania, I would suggest other readers look at a recent RFC about the National emblem of Belarus for context. --Jabbi (talk) 11:19, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Follow-up: Entry in Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2006) [1] "Arnold Joseph Toynbee was in the twentieth century the foremost contemporary representative of what is sometimes termed "speculative philosophy of history." --Jabbi (talk) 11:39, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Hey Jabbi, having myself read large parts of Toynbee's books, the issue with Toynbee's writing is most likely not any of the concrete observations like in this case with Lithuania, but more so his understanding of macro-level civilizational decline, growth and etc. Toynbee's statements with regards to Lithuania, such as that the formation of the Lithuanian's state being (at least partially) caused by the Teutonic Order's attacks on Lithuania are corroborated by various sources, e.g. "The German threat induced the Lithuanian tribes to unite in the middle of the 13th century under Mindaugas." (Encyclopedia Britannica) or The eastward expansion of medieval German Christianity—under the guise of the crusading religious-military Teutonic Order—brought a number of important changes to the Lithuanians. This outside pressure forced the Lithuanians to unite and sparked Lithuanian expansion south and eastward, into the Belarus and Kievan territories." . Comments about Toynbee's writings being criticised, although valid and justified, are insufficient for the removal of Toynbee's statement about Lithuania. --Cukrakalnis (talk) 18:30, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@Jabbi:, @Cukrakalnis: Toynbee's statements about which you are complaining here are correct and as Cukrakalnis already stated, other reliable sources states the same, thus Toynbee's opinion do not violate any rules and should be kept. I would like to point out to the fact that recently some Belarusian users attempted to censor similar content, which they did not like, from the Encyclopedia Britannica as well (1, 2). As a result, this article had to be locked (3). After all, we keep such content as "At the same time, Belarusian nationalists viewed the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as a historical form of Belarusian statehood along with medieval principalities of Polotsk, Turov and others.[9]", which clearly is not more reliable than Toynbee's opinion and is nothing else than baseless nationalistic statements. Belarusian nationalistic propaganda (described in the quote before) which claims that Lithuania is not Lithuania and that Belarus is Lithuania will not be tolerated here as the primary "truth". So if your mission here is to spread such content, I warn you that it was rejected many times already in English Wikipedia because pseudoscientific statements are against the rules of Wikipedia. We respect scientific truth here. -- Pofka (talk) 19:23, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Your arguments make some sense, and Cukrakalnis, maintains respect and courtesy in his responses. Strictly speaking it is still WP:OR to refer to references in the talk page in order to justify inclusion of a reference in article. I suspect it is factually correct that Teutonic attacks acted as a catalyst for early Lithuanian state formation. If you want to state that as a fact you can't use Toynbee, you should use Britannica as you do above. That's how Wikipedia works. Not by cherrypicking paragraphs from discredited volumes of history. The only reason you two are here pushing Toynbee is because of a reference to Pahonia. This makes it a bit tricky to justify. Toynbee should not be referenced in the article without a qualification, plenty of people will read this and see it as an authorative source when it simply isn't. If you insist on keeping it because of the passing reference to Pahonia (which makes your exercise less than academic) then you should flag it somehow as not being 100% credible. --Jabbi (talk) 22:37, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Toynbee's sources are reliable. Every historian/academic receives some amount of criticism regarding their works, however some criticism does not automatically make all their works as false, unreliable. -- Pofka (talk) 20:44, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Russians?

"Russian" culture? "Russian" subjects? In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania? What is this? A Putinist propaganda outlet? There were Eastern Slavs in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, speaking Belarusian or Ukrainian depending on the territory, and using an artificial Koine known as "Ruthenian" for cultural issues. All this was "from the Rus'", but it was not "Russian" in any sense. Or maybe there were not yet "Ukrainians" nor "Belarusians", but Russians did exist? Be serious, please!FerranLup (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 10:12, 17 April 2022 (UTC)